Cannes 2014 Diary: Day 10

Friday May 23

The final weekend of Cannes was indeed wonderful, but could have been a lot more so if I hadn’t fallen into the oh-so-familiar trap of total festival burnout. After eight or nine days of racing around like a maniac, staying up too late, and eating erratically (I swear, this town is the king of “croissant for breakfast, forget to eat until 9pm dinner”), I started to get a little scratch in my throat. On Friday, I was still ok. By Saturday … well, you’ll read that in the next blog post, eh?

first film of the day, White God

On Friday, that throat-scratch was still just a distant murmur, something I barely realized would become an issue. I dragged my butt out of bed and went to two films, both of which I really enjoyed. The first was the supremely weird Hungarian dog movie White God. I look forward to writing more about this one when I do my roundup of festival faves. The second was the almost universally panned Ryan Gosling joint, Lost River. I thought it was a pretty strong debut. Flawed, sure, but nowhere near as bad as many of the totally knives-out reviews would suggest. More on both of those in my movie roundup post in a couple of days.

Lost River was pretty good, y’all

After the films, C + I went back to the apartment to briefly chill before dinner, which was a lovely affair with Paul (from Frightfest), Chad (from the internet) and our lovely writer & food lover & all around charming friend Jason Gorber (from Toronto – how novel) at La Brouette de Grand-Mère (Grandmother’s Wheelbarrow), a restaurant we try to hit every year for its charming fixed price menu.

There are a couple of “set” courses that get brought out to the table family style – a big bowl of delicious salad and a huge loaf of homemade terrine with lots of bread (I think I ate my annual quota of bread during these two weeks) which comes accompanied by a glass of champagne.

Chad and I show off the empty terrine loaf pan (job well done, team)

This followed by a smoked salmon course (which is served with a shot of vodka) followed by individually selected mains (I had the pork loin and it was mighty fine) which are served with a big batch of communal scalloped potatoes (to die for, seriously). Tim & Karrie League joined us for dessert and some final catching up (my caramel pana cotta was excellent), which would have been a perfect end to the night. But of course, we went to the Petit instead.

everyone at dinner

A dear Toronto friend had been trying for a couple of days to hook me up with a cool lady he knows from the UK who happened to also be in Cannes, and on Friday we finally succeeded in meeting up at the Petit Majestic. She was delightful, the cheap (ish) beer flowed as easily as the conversation, and before I knew it I was hoarse and exhausted and it was 4am again. Oh, Cannes. You cruel mistress.